Kaye Ingram, 29, moved to Dallas in 2016 but was rejected from various jobs for many months. “You’re constantly feeling on edge and looking over your shoulder.”įor some black trans women, daily experiences of bias are not unusual.
Naomi Green, a black trans woman and program coordinator at Abounding Prosperity Inc., an organization that supports Dallas's black LGBTQ community, said she’s now learning to shoot a gun and is organizing self-defense classes. “We were en route back to Houston, and we got word that there was a young lady that they fished out of the lake in Dallas,” Watters said, adding, “We weren't even able to complete the mourning of the loss of this young lady – then to get hit with another individual that was murdered."
Just weeks later, on the first day of Pride, Chynal Lindsey, 26, was found dead – the third black trans woman murdered in Dallas in less than a year.ĭee Dee Watters, a black trans activist and president of Black Trans Women Inc., had just left Booker’s wake when she heard about Lindsey’s death. Dallas resident Muhlaysia Booker, 23, was assaulted in April in an attack that went viral on social media, then fatally shot in May. For trans women of color in Texas, recent months have brought terror. This past Pride Month witnessed a slew of violent anti-LGBTQ hate crimes. Triple homicide targeting LGBTQ: 2 gay men, 1 transgender woman murdered Attacks leave black trans women 'constantly feeling on edge' But no one with the power to do anything about it seems willing to do what is necessary to get this right.” “There’s a serious disconnect, and everyone knows this disconnect exists. Austin, who was Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under the Obama administration. And none of our crime data is worse than our hate crime data,” said Roy L. One would think that we would do a better job of collecting crime data. “The data is embarrassingly bad for a country that supposedly takes public safety so seriously. That number fluctuated but eventually fell to 1,135 in 2012 and 1076 in 2016. In 2008, the FBI reported 1,297 anti-gay hate crime. Under the Obama administration, the average number of anti-gay hate crime incidents reported to the FBI each year was higher than the number of incidents reported in 2017.
TYPES OF GAY MEN CHART LICENSE
“It gives a sense of impunity and a license to harm folks.” “The level of discourse that we are getting from the Trump administration and leadership only hurts our community, only hurts trans people,” Maril said. At an annual National Prayer Breakfast this past February, Trump defended a state-funded Michigan adoption agency’s efforts to ban gay and lesbian couples from adopting children. In 2017, the president announced on Twitter that he would be banning transgender people from the military. Some advocates point to the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric as potential catalysts for the increasing violence in recent years.Īfter Trumps' election, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted 201 incidents of election-related harassment and intimidation across the country, including incidents targeting the LGBTQ community and people of color. In a smaller or rural community, that outing could result in an eviction or loss of a job,” said Robin Maril, Human Rights Campaign Associate Legal Director.Īre the young really the most tolerant? Results of this LGBTQ survey are 'alarming' “To the extent that we don’t have universal protections from discrimination on the basis of employment, housing, and public accommodations, if someone comes forward to report a hate crime, they could also be officially outing themselves as LGBTQ.
Many people who experience hate crimes do not report the incidents to law enforcement, for various reasons. The NCVS data also suggests that a greater percentage of all hate crimes are motivated by a bias against sexual orientation than the FBI data.